KC Ho

My journey to become a painter was not easy.  I grew up in a small village in Malaysia where the community was predominantly of Chinese ethnicity. During my education in Malaysian Chinese schools, I always chose painting over Chinese language study.  As a result, my teachers and classmates said, “His choice is a betrayal of the Chinese language” or “He betrays the Chinese”. I began to feel the chasm between myself and those around me while discovering how art could help make sense of it all.

I subsequently moved to America to pursue an engineering degree. In the U.S. I discovered other parts of myself that made me feel different. Mainly, I had to come to terms with being both gay and Asian. Since then, I have been working on self-discovery, self-acceptance, and self-love. Most of my paintings reflect that journey to understand myself and those around me, including a cross-cultural exploration of all the raw, spontaneous, volatile, and complex emotions that make us human.

Painting is the instrument I use to tap into my memories as well as feelings of happiness, loneliness, serenity, sadness, chaos, uncertainty, self-doubt, fear and anger. The creative process has become a form of self-medication that allows me to cultivate a state of inner peace and self-acceptance.   

Although there may not always be material similarities between different paintings, they are linked by common threads of human emotion and life experience.  I hope my work provokes viewers to get in touch with their own feelings and perhaps reach unexplored territories within themselves, leading to self-discovery and self-love.

Collections and Selected Shows......

• 2023 San Francisco Open Studio

• 2023 Holiday Show @ Miro Studios

• Featured in 2002 Tri Valley, Inc. Calendar, Berkeley CA

• “Visible”, “Haloween” & Botanical” Group show at 2358MRKT Gallery. San Francisco CA

• The Gallery @Starhill. Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

• Bayer Corporation collection

• Michigan Technological University, MI